


The Polish Fic

by rabbitxheart



Series: Polyglot!Derek [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: M/M, Multilingual Derek Hale, also there should be a holocaust warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-06
Updated: 2015-05-06
Packaged: 2018-03-29 08:46:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3889951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rabbitxheart/pseuds/rabbitxheart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I posted this on tumblr over a year ago, and I didn't do it well. I treated some very, very sensitive subjects really bad and I took it down. Since then, a lot of people have asked where it went to or why I took it down, so I decided to fix it up. Make it better. I hope I succeeded with that, since it was never my intention to upset anyone.</p><p>This will probably be the first in a series of polyglot!derek fics, if I know my own linguist self well enough.</p><p>Edit: People have also questioned the incredibly stereotypical character that is Stacy, and I can (unfortunately) inform you that she is a real person, and all of Stacy's choices and words in this fic are copy/pasted from real life situations. Yeah, I don't even, either.</p>
    </blockquote>





	The Polish Fic

**Author's Note:**

> I posted this on tumblr over a year ago, and I didn't do it well. I treated some very, very sensitive subjects really bad and I took it down. Since then, a lot of people have asked where it went to or why I took it down, so I decided to fix it up. Make it better. I hope I succeeded with that, since it was never my intention to upset anyone.
> 
> This will probably be the first in a series of polyglot!derek fics, if I know my own linguist self well enough.
> 
> Edit: People have also questioned the incredibly stereotypical character that is Stacy, and I can (unfortunately) inform you that she is a real person, and all of Stacy's choices and words in this fic are copy/pasted from real life situations. Yeah, I don't even, either.

When the principal announces that BHHS along with two other schools in the area are to hold a writing contest and sending the winners to Poland for a tour of a whole list of WWII sites and Holocaust museeums, Stiles knows he's not turning it in. Even if he only has to write a motivation as to why he should be allowed to go.

Stiles writes the letter, _has_ to, writes about his grandma's journey to the US and how she met Stiles' grandpa there, who'd been through as much as she had, his mother's illness and how she promised she'd take him once she got well again. He writes, because when Coach brings it up Scott looks at him with his puppy eyes and looks so happy and excited about sending Stiles to a country he'll most probably get lost in.

"You could go!" he says. "They let you bring someone else, too."

"I guess," Stiles mutters, and writes, cries over it and writes some more. Then he crumples it up in a little ball and throws it in the bin, ignoring it and most definitely _not_ turning it in.

Stiles doesn't turn it in, but Scott does.

 

 

"Stiles."

Stiles nearly knocks a shelf over with all the flailing.

"Wha- Jesus, Derek, are you actively trying to kill me again?" He doesn't need to look at Derek to know he's rolling his eyes.

"Something I should know about?"

"Nope." Stiles goes back to looking through the books. There has to be one somewhere, they can't all be checked out.

" _Stiles."_ Derek says impatiently, refusing to leave.

" _What?!"_ He hisses back, worn too thin already at the thought of going to Poland, hearing the tongue without it being his mother's voice, without being able to understand it.

"The last time you went to this side of the language section we had to deal with a drevakac. What are you looking for and why?"

"A fucking, I don't even know anymore, just _anything_ that will teach me Polish in twelve weeks."

Derek frowns, taking in the bags under his eyes and the twitch in his muscles. Stiles self-conciously twists and turns a little, not sure if he wants to stand his ground or make a run for it.

"Polish."

"Yes, Polish, the language of Poland, where both half of my family and my name happens to be from and where I'm going in three months. Unfortunately that side of my family is the _dead_ side and I can't even pronounce my own fucking name anymore so unless you have some sort of miraculous solution to this, _scram_." Stiles flicks his library card at Derek in an attempt to send him off or hit him in his favourite eye or _something_.

Of course Derek catches it without even looking, eyes still locked on Stiles. When he glances down at the card Stiles realises he just handed Derek a plastic card with his name on it.

"See what I'm dealing with?" Stiles turns back to the books. Maybe he could get by with some Russian? Sure, new alphabet but it's still-

"Mieczyslaw."

It's as soft and gentle as when his mother would try to wake him up, not the hard Germanish pronounciation of everyone who's ever tried since, himself included. Derek says it again, with more confidence and a little more volume, and _nails_ it.

" _How_?"

"I, um. Have a linguistics degree." He looks up and stretches the card towards Stiles. If he didn't know better he'd say it looked like some kind of peace offering. "I could teach you. If you want."

"No one's gotten it right since..." Stiles trails off. From the frown on Derek's face, he gets it. "You would?"

Derek nods, sure and honest.

"I'll stop by tonight?"

"Yeah, okay."

"You should go home and sleep a few hours." It's not delivered with the usual amount of attitude and feels a wave of gratefullness wash over him. "You look like you haven't slept all week."

"Well," Stiles shrugs. "You know. Moms."

"I do," Derek agrees and walks off towards the exit.

 

"Wait, you have a degree?!" Stiles cries out long after Derek is gone and gets shushed by the librarian.

 

 

Derek sits next to Stiles on his bed, legs folded under him and book in hand, which is weird in itself.

The guy actually went home and put together a plan for lessons and phrases, what parts to go through when and then made work sheets for it, for Stiles. He has just about enough time to learn the basics, to learn how to get around without getting lost and communicating with the locals. This is also weird.

Derek actually speaks Polish. Fluently. And, judging by the Cyrillic on his very, very thick book, he knows Russian, too. This wins the Academy Award of Weird.

"Take a breather if you need to. Cramming won't make it stick." Derek puts the book down and looks at him. "Are you freaking out again?"

"What do you mean, _'again'_?" Stiles says maybe a tad too defensively.

"You're telling me you had it all together at the library this morning?" He raises an eyebrow and goes back to... whatever the hell he's reading.

"Well, no. Fine." Stiles wiggles his way up until he's sitting shoulder to shoulder with Derek, sneaking a peek into the book. All Russian, no pictures.

_Weird._

"Who are you going with?"

"A girl from my math class, I think..." Stiles has to stop and think if he knows any of the other two from the other schools, but comes up blank. Derek is looking at him now, book forgotten. "I don't know the others. I'm going to Europe with complete strangers. Shit."

"I was thinking about the person you get to bring. And they're not complete strangers if one's your classmate."

"Well, true, but the only words I've exchanged with Stacy are angry ones. She's so small minded it's ridiculous, when Danny came out she was convinced she could 'turn him back'." Stiles grumbles. "I was thinking about bringing my dad."

"Has he ever been?" Derek's pretending to be reading still. Stiles knows better, knows Derek's face better, knows a look of concentration when he sees it. He's focused on Stiles, not the book. It's equal parts weird and warming.

"He went once, with mom and my grandparents. He proposed to her there, on one of those bridges full of locks."

Derek is just about to say something when they hear the front door open.

 

When John comes home it's well after office hours, longing for a warm meal and a soft couch. The last thing he expects to find is the salmon unthawed, the potatoes uncooked and Derek Hale sitting cross-legged in his son's bed, reading.

"Okay, it's a school night and we haven't had any weird animal attacks in months. Stiles, I-"

" _Mieczyslaw."_

"You _what?_ " He glances at Derek, who's no longer reading the book but smiling at the back of Stiles' head.

"Mam na imię Mieczyslaw," his son corrects him again, grinning from ear to ear. As far as he remembers from listening to his wife and mother-in-law talk, it's flawlessly pronounced, if a little slow.

"I'm ordering pizza to go with the beers I am about to open, emphasis on _beers_. Plural. Derek, what do you want on yours?"

"Pieczarki i szynka," Stiles answers for him with a quite frankly scary grin. Even Derek looks a little freaked out when he translates it.

 

"I still can't believe you have a degree," Stiles says and pokes Derek's shoulder when they've all sat down around the table.

"Two, actually." His dad nods approvingly, Derek pours himself a glass of milk and Stiles chokes on his pizza.

"Come again?" He says hoarsley when he's coughed up the offending piece of pepperoni.

"A Master's in lingustics and a Bachelor's in history. History is written by the winners so I learned Polish and German to get more books and a broader picture, then I just kind of... kept going. It gets easier once you're past four or five."

"Books?"

"Languages," Derek replies with a shrug and bites into his food.

John chokes on his beer.

 

 

His father isn't even surprised when Stiles asks if it's okay to maybe, perhaps, not really sure what he'll say but hopefully bring Derek with him instead. Because Derek likes languages and history. Totally why.

"Just get home in one piece," he snorts and ruffles Stiles' hair. "Take lots of pictures."

 

Derek looks about as surprised to be asked as Stiles is when Derek actually agrees.

"I've always wanted to go," he admits quietly, leaning against the heavy door of the loft. He looks like he just got out of bed despite it nearly being dinner time, dressed in soft sweatpants and a worn tank top.

And bare feet. Jesus.

"Yeah, I kind of guessed."

Tilting his head a little, Derek looks at him so intensely Stiles starts wondering if he has something smeared on his face that he didn't notice.

"I was just about to order something and watch a movie. Hungry?" Derek asks, still unusually quiet.

"I could eat," Stiles nods, and Derek steps aside to let him in.

 

 

Poland is amazing. Their company could have been a little better with Stacy constantly trying to get Stiles out of the way to get into Derek's pants, but Derek ignores her and Stiles follows his example. Most of their daytime is scheduled with churches and war sites and Derek sucks all of it up like a sponge, buys books and souvenirs and takes a nearly frightening amount of pictures with a camera Stiles didn't even know he owned. The pictures are frighteningly good, too, monuments and people alike. Sometimes he takes pictures of Stiles too, when Derek thinks he doesn't notice. It's like each day brings him up another security clearance level, allowing him to see new sides of Derek.

 

Day one he wakes up in their Warsaw hotel room to find Derek brushing his teeth in flannel pyjama pants and messy hair, smiling to himself. When Stiles asks why, he starts talking about museums and WWII orders to level Warsaw with the ground and even if Stiles is much too tired to take it all in, Derek gets so into it that he forgets the toothbrush in his hand and Stiles doesn't have the heart to make him stop. It's probably the most carefree he's ever seen Derek be.

Until they get to the museum, that is.

 

Day two means more history and Derek taking pictures all over the place, rebuilt buildings and places where the crumbles of war are still present and when they're done for the day Derek takes him out to the streets. They go to market places and coffee shops, speak with the old men and women in the stalls and Stiles orders food all by himself in Polish, proudly munching away at his little bowl of hunter's stew while Derek has mushroom soup. Derek buys a small bag of toffee from a two young girls and her mother, crouching down to speak with the littlest one about her wolf plushie and Stiles has to physically restrain himself from cooing.

The toffees are soft in the middle, just like the ones his grandma used to give him, and he tells Derek so. Derek doesn't even hesitate to give Stiles the rest of his bag.

 

Day three is... different. They pile into the rented minibus first thing in the morning, bring their guide with them and when they arrive at Treblinka it's so silent it makes Stiles' skin crawl. Derek doesn't bring his camera this time. Instead he leans in to whisper facts to Stiles from time to time, explains what it looked like and what used to be where.

 

 

They've been in Krakow for about a day, just enough time for Stiles to let it sink in that he's walking the same streets his family once called home when they meet Hanna. This is the first and only time Stiles wonders if bringing Derek was a good idea, apart from Stacy's constant half-assed attempts on flirting or getting Derek to get drunk with her.

Hanna is old and wrinkly and she's absolutely _tiny._ They all meet up in a small café in the Old Town, this old building that survived the war and got fully restored, a little bubble of untouched history. When she discovers that Derek speaks fluent Polish she asks him to sit next to her in case she needs something translated. Derek obliges and holds out his arm for her to hold, then leads her to the table, Stiles taking the seat next to Derek.

She looks so frail that Stiles is afraid she'll shatter, but her voice is strong and even as she speaks of the ghetto and the labour, the train carriages and the long, long lines of people. Stiles remembers a little of what his grandfather told him, but he was so little when he died and his grandfather hadn't been in the camps until afterwards. He only saw the fallout, not the horrors as they happened.

Hanna doesn't water it down, make it easier to listen to. She tells it like it was, most of their group are stunned silent, one or two even crying.

"My entire family stepped onto that train to the camp," she says, her voice wavering for the first time. "My mother was pregnant and my father had a limp. My little brother was only five. They were sent into one line, towards the chambers, my sister and I into the other. She died a few months before the liberation, I think. Time was difficult to tell. I was the only one who came home."

Stiles only sees his potentially horrible mistake right after impact, sees Derek tense up.

”People ask me sometimes why I smile so much, with all that happened. I tell them it's the greatest _fuck you_ I could ever give the nazis." The rest of them are kind of taken aback, looking to eachother until Hanna starts chuckling, obviously happy with having thrown them off a bit. ”Honestly. I've been angry, I've pretended it didn't happen, I've been sad. I've been sad enough for a lifetime. I'm an old woman now, I deserve to spend the rest of my life laughing and smiling.” She nods a little to herself, smiles at their tour guide who's crying. "With enough time, flowers grow even in places like Birkenau."

Derek sniffles, and Stiles doesn't hesitate to reach out under the table and hold his hand.

The ride to the hotel is a quiet one. Neither Stiles nor Derek say much, but it still feels okay. Outside is grey and rainy and all Stiles wants to do is sleep until they have pile onto the bus towards Oświęcim in the morning.

"I need a shower before we go eat," Derek sighs as he lifts their luggage out of the bus, Stiles agreeing with a mumble.

 

 

At dinner, Stacy pounces.

It's the only word Stiles can think of as she more or less corners Derek by the potatoes and completely drops the 'let's get coffee' attitude and goes for 'ditch Stilinski and join me in my room after dinner'. Only much, much less censored.

Derek just looks at her, not even looking half the apex predator he is, moving closer to Stiles and further from Stacy, inch by inch, before walking off.

"Oh my God, Stacy, will you cut it out?" Stiles hisses at her as when Derek's made his way back to the table without uttering a word. "There is a time and place for everything and you trying to slither all over him is _nowhere_ and _never._ " Especially after this trip, he thinks, but doesn't say. Stacy doesn't have the security clearance for that level of info.

"Are you jealous?" She raises an eyebrow at him, reaching for a piece of bread.

"I- what?" Stiles splutters. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"He's too hot to be gay. Besides, even if he was, he's still way out of your league, Stilinski. You're the class clown, not the love interest," Stacy quips and walks back to her table, making sure to walk past Derek on the way. Derek glares at her for a brief second then stands up and walks over to Stiles, bringing both their jackets with him.

"Come on."

"Wait, are we leaving? What about dinner?"

"I'll buy you some on the way, let's go." Derek hands him his jacket then takes his hand, leading him out of there as Stacy stares, gaping.

"On the way _where_?"

 

Derek guides him through the streets, closer and closer to the river until they reach a bridge. They've reached the middle by the time Derek comes to a halt and leans against the railing.

Still holding Stiles' hand.

"Okay. What was that about?" Stiles leans back against the bridge next to Derek. Derek sighs loudly and frowns at him. He lets go of his hand to pinch at the bridge of his nose.

"Have you any idea what it's like to see this person who people think they know, _you_ think you know, and then time passes and there's this whole other person underneath and people still talk about the facade as if it's all there is, when you know there's so much more to them?" He sounds as tired as he sounds irritated, but it's less pissed off and more drained than Stiles is used to.

"It's a bit familiar, yes," Stiles sighs and nods to the camera bag slung over Derek's shoulder.

"That girl keeps putting you down when I know how wrong she is and I can't correct her without telling her you run with werewolves at night. It's driving me _insane_."

Stiles takes a step back until he's not touching Derek anymore, the sinking feeling in his stomach getting worse and worse.

"That's what that was about? Stacy? We just walked out of there, _holding hands,_ because you wanted to make a point? To _Stacy_? Then why didn't you let go when we were out of there?" Stiles feels his face heat up but fuck it, he hasn't even really begun hoping that this thing between them might turn into A Thing before it gets stomped on.

"We left because she was wrong and I held your damn hand because I wanted to," Derek half-yells, crossing his arms over his chest like he's won the argument.

"Good!" Stiles barks back. "Wait, what?"

Derek visibly deflates, looking down on his shoes.

"Forget I said that."

"No. No, I won't. I-"

Stiles glances down, taking in the rows and rows of locks, some new and others rusty and worn by years of rain and snow.

"Wait. Derek? Derek, is this the bridge where..?" Stiles swallows, voice shaking when Derek finally looks up at him.

Derek nods, then steps aside, gesturing to the spot he'd been covering.

"The big, blue padlock right under the railing."

It's a little rusty at the bottom, but the railing has protected most of it from the weather, and when Stiles leans down he can see the familiar curves of his mother's name etched into the upper half, his dad's right below with the date of their engagement. He traces his thumb over her name, feeling the little ridges of the metal.

"It was going to be a surprise, your dad told me where it was. I'm sorry I messed it up."

"You taught me Polish," Stiles says as he stands up. "You taught me Polish and you came with me to Poland and do things like hold the hands of old ladies and make children giggle and take stunning pictures of _everything_ , then you bring me to the place of my parent's engagement and you think you've messed up? No."

Derek's frown disappears quickly when Stiles reaches out to tangle their fingers together.

"I'm not going to propose to you. At least not now. But I _am_ going to kiss you. Then we're going to go have dinner, like a date, because that's something I think we should do. Date. And then you can hold my damn hand whenever you like. Okay?"

Derek is biting his lips, so obviously trying not to smile, and it's probably the most adorable thing Stiles has ever seen him do, which should say a lot considering the things he's seen the past week.

"Okay."

 

Derek holds his hand all through the Auschwitz tour and the way back when Stiles keeps wondering if this is what it feels to be like Lydia, feeling so surrounded by death. He tangles their fingers together along with their legs as they sleep, and when Scott and his father come to pick them up from the airport, too.

The only one who seems even remotely surprised is Stacy.

  


 


End file.
